SUNDERLAND boss Howard Wilkinson last night hailed goalkeeper Jurgen Macho's attitude after his tremendous turnaround in fortunes at the club.

Macho turned in a super show at Liverpool yesterday to help his side claim an unexpected 0-0 draw.

And a delighted Wilkinson revealed how he has witnessed the Austrian's transformation at first hand.

"If you want a barometer of how things have changed here it's the keeper," said the Black Cats chief, who knows Macho has also been rewarded with a call-up for Austria.

"Five weeks ago he was nowhere, I doubt he could even catch a beach ball.

"But he was magnificent and along with a few of the other lads it was a very hard earned point for us."

Wilkinson has drafted in Estonian international Mart Poom on loan, but on yesterday's showing Macho is going to take some shifting.

And his manager has told Macho that it is his place to lose now.

"I told Jurgen on Friday what I was going to do," said Wilkinson, who is likely to keep Macho in the side for this weekend's home match with Birmingham.

"I also told him that he had the shirt on merit at the moment and that it was up to him to keep the shirt.

"I thought Jurgen was magnificent at Liverpool and he made some great saves."

It's now five matches unbeaten for Sunderland in all competitions and a delighted Wilkinson believes every player is doing what is asked of them.

Liverpool dominated proceedings - they had 21 shots whereas the visitors failed to have any - but Wilkinson revealed that he was pleased with how events unfolded.

"It's five games unbeaten now and that's probably a good a run as this club has had in 18 months," he said. "Now it's something that we can build on and we have to be happy with how things are going.

"This result was always going to be a difficult one. And every player and all the staff deserved to come away with something because of the way they have worked so hard.

"Even the strikers. I told Flo and Phillips what I wanted them to do and they did it. It was an unusual game for them.

"I told them if we could get them both to give us 70 per cent and tussle for everything then we could get something. We stuck to that plan and it worked.

"I never thought about whether we could hold on, we just had to keep going.

"If we couldn't hold on and they scored then we might have had to change things a bit. Fortunately we were able to stick to Plan A."

Wilkinson also paid special tribute to the way striker Tore Andre Flo has reacted to the change in regime at the club.

He said: "Tore was like a baby giraffe when I first took over. But over the past few weeks he has just got stronger and stronger and I can't fault him.

"He has now got a lot of his confidence back and he will get more of that.

"Tore is not renowned for his aerial ability but he was winning headers up there against Sami Hyypia, who is probably the best defender in the world. He has done well and I'm hoping he can now keep it up."

Read more about Sunderland here.